George W. Benthien
Don Barach
Naval Command, Control and Ocean Surveillance Ctr., Code 712, San Diego, CA 92152-5000
In this paper a method is presented for the time-domain analysis of the mutual interaction effects in transducer arrays. This method is applicable to a large class of linear and nonlinear devices. Most analyses of array acoustic interactions to date have utilized a frequency-domain approach. However, a time-domain approach is more natural when the transducer elements are nonlinear or when it is desired to study transient effects. A method for calculating array acoustic interaction effects in the time domain is presented that can be easily coupled to models for many linear and nonlinear transducer elements. The boundary integral equation program CHIEF is used to generate acoustic interaction coefficients in the frequency domain which are then Fourier transformed to the time domain. When coupled with the transducer equations the result is a coupled set of integral-differential equations that can be solved by an explicit time-stepping procedure. Numerical results are presented for a small closely packed array of simple linear transducer elements and for an array of nonlinear hydraulically driven transducers. [Work supported by SPAWAR, PMW 183.]